By Louise Radnofsky
Congressional Democrats warned House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) that his probe of how federal agencies are handling Freedom of Information Act requests could overburden the bureaucracies.
Mr. Issa wrote to 180 agencies last week asking for logs of FOIA requests filed in the past five years, as well as all communications between the requestor and the agency for requests which weren’t fully answered within 45 days. He wants the answers by Feb. 15.
The Oversight Committee appears to be extending its investigation into potential abuses of FOIA at the Department of Homeland Security to include the whole federal government. The Associated Press reported last July that Homeland Security had senior political advisers review FOIA requests submitted by journalists and advocacy groups about touchy subjects.
Mr. Issa told the agencies that he was asking about compliance with FOIA requests because he believed that journalists and watchdogs needed them to hold the government accountable, and that he was “very interested in ensuring that all federal agencies respond in a timely, substantive, and non-discriminatory manner.”
FOIA offices maintain logs of requests, typically identifying the sender, the nature of the request and dates the request was submitted and when a response was given. Some logs are routinely posted online and all of them can themselves be requested through FOIA.
But three Democrats on the oversight committee said in a letter to Mr. Issa sent Wednesday that the request for communications went too far, since there were more than 133,000 backlogged requests in the 2008 fiscal year, and over 77,000 in 2009. Getting all the communications between the agencies and requestors for those backlogs could get really hard, the Democrats said.
“It is difficult to estimate how many pages of documents would be responsive to your requests, but it is safe to say it would be in the hundreds of thousands, if not more,” said the letter, which was signed by Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, and Reps. Peter Welch of Vermont and Gerry Connolly of Virginia.
“Without a defined focus, your inquiry will place a significant burden on FOIA offices and divert limited staff from processing requests from the public,” they wrote.
Republicans have received the letter and are reviewing it, a spokesman said. The spokesman added that the committee might be willing to let agencies take more time to answer some of Mr. Issa’s questions.
The letter also expressed concern about agencies handing over names of people making FOIA requests. Republicans believe that they need this to be able to determine whether particular requests could have been delayed for political reasons.
The Democrats are asking Mr. Issa to hold back on the communications part of his request for now, and meet with the agencies in charge of FOIA compliance and the FOIA officers
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